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Recording a meeting with Hamza in October 1997, an MI5 officer wrote: ‘I reasserted the view that over the past few months in particular, he had walked a dangerous tightrope and had come close to being culpable for incitement to violence . . . the Security Service, in particular, took a dim view of those advocating violence, even if the violence was perpetrated overseas.’

Muslim cleric Abu Hamza said that he was helping to keep the streets of Britain safe but still felt the need to have a masked bodyguard

MI5 claims that it was planning to arrest Abu Hamza four years before the terrorist attack on New York on September 11, 2001

MI5 agent Reda Hassaine, who infiltrated the mosque, said: ‘Hamza was able to recruit and brainwash vulnerable young men and raise huge amounts of cash for his contacts overseas.

‘The security services seemed incapable of putting it in its proper al-Qaeda context.